66 Yes," said Rose Halliday earnestly. "Motherliness is just what Patience Strong is made of. She has too much of it to be shut up to any one household. She would always have brimmed over." "More are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife," " answered Patience, a smile quivering on her lips and her eyes tender. Rose Halliday took up the quotation. "I know it all, the whole chapter," she said. "Enlarge the place of thy rest, . . . lengthen thy ends; thou shalt not be ashamed. For thy maker is thy husband; . . . the God of the whole earth.' And the beautiful building of a life that is to be: 'thy stones laid with fair colors,' 'thy foundations of sapphires,' thy windows of agates,' 'thy gates of carbuncle,' and all thy borders of pleasant stones.' "This is the heritage "" 6 "Ah, Rose, hush!" cried her friend. "Dear Mrs. Halliday," said Daisy Hope, a few minutes later, "you may think it strange of me, but I must go back to the beginning of our talk, and ask one thing of you. How can widowhood always be as peaceful as you say, even after the best marriages? We all do things we are sorry for; we misunderstand, we are unkind; and then - it will be so terrible to recollect! Married people do have quarrels, even when they love each other; engaged people do ;" and she blushed and laughed. "And when-one- is gone away oh, it must be dreadful!" But "But one is never gone away," said Rose Halliday, softly. "Nothing is gone but hindrance. It is hindrance, imperfection, incompleteness-misunderstanding, as you said -that makes people, sometimes, in the hurry or worry or anxiety of life, quick or hard or unkind; it is difference, for a moment, that makes them 'differ.' Don't you see? -afterward-it is all heart to heart. It is all understood, as soon as one of them is within. Then both can speak and understand in the within. Then everything is explained and forgiven in the long ago; it is forgotten, except for loving the dearer, in the now. Yet you can't see. I can't tell you. I told you it was not time. You will come to it if you ever come to that. Only, dear, remember beforehand that it shall be so; remember, when the trouble comes, that it is only hindrance. Then there shall be peace and patience from the beginning to the end." "How poor and superficial all the wedding clothes seem, and the wedding fuss, and the wedding presents, when it-and on - like that!" you think into "Yes, Daisy, compared; or when they absorb the importance and fill up the thoughts. -It is hard to prevent that, too; there is so much outside in ways of doing, now." or "I don't believe in wedding presents any other presents—in the mass," said Mrs. Halliday. "I think they spoil the making of the home," assented Miss Patience. "That ought to grow; to come by degrees, out of real fitness and the true giving, as the making of the marriage does. To be real, it must be a life-long thing; each new gain in it a separate gladness, through separate attaining or a distinct receiving. Otherwise it stands for nothing." 66 Except debt and encumbrance," said Daisy, with a funny little sigh, taking refuge, as before, from deep feeling in half nonsense. "Oh, what would all the dear people whom I have got to write notes to - notes of hand, to be redeemed by and by-say if they knew I said that? But you make me feel so, you high, lovely, superior women. You make me wish it could all be stripped off, and only something sweet, and solemn, and signifying left." She was getting up and putting on her gloves; but it was quite evident that she listened yet, as she did so, for some last word. Mrs. Halliday looked up into the sweet, bright, young face, with a smile. "If that is at the heart of it," she said, "the rest won't matter. It will be dropped off-out of custom-by and by- before your notes of hand mature, perhaps, Daisy. It will be found out to be very vulgar. It will become 'good form' to be married quietly." "And to be quiet in everything else, let us hope, after this modern cyclone of tumult and extravagance and excitement has whirled over us and scattered in space- as it will do," said Miss Patience Strong. |